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After Roasting, Trump Reacts In Character

Donald Trump, speaking to a Republican women's group in Las Vegas on Thursday, is flirting with a run for the White House.Credit
Julie Jacobson/Associated Press

LAS VEGAS — He was savagely mocked by President Obama and the comedian Seth Meyers at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — belittled as a political charlatan with an unchecked ego and a dead fox plastered on his head.

But the next morning, Donald J. Trump was not laughing. He was doing what seems to come more naturally: lashing out.

“Seth Meyers has no talent,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on Sunday. “He fell totally flat. In fact, I thought Seth’s delivery was so bad that he hurt himself.”

Mr. Trump, who appeared unsmiling throughout most of the annual dinner on Saturday night, acknowledged his occasional discomfort (“I am not looking to laugh along with my enemies”) but said he viewed the rough treatment as a measure of the fear he had struck in the Washington establishment. “It was like a roast of Donald Trump,” he said, clearly reveling in the attention, if not the content.

The Trump-centric dinner capped what could only be described as the Week of the Donald — a dizzying span in which the developer and reality television star drove the news (compelling the president to release his full birth certificate) and became the news (after delivering a profanity-laced speech in Las Vegas).

None of it, however, answered the central questions posed by his White House flirtation: Is it real or, like his hit series on NBC, a reality show? Even a comment Mr. Trump made to Bloomberg News on Sunday — that he had decided to run “in my mind” — created as much confusion as clarity. A top aide, Michael Cohen, said he could still change his mind and nothing was official.

During a lengthy conversation in his 61st-floor suite at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, amid the Trump-branded room service menus and bottles of Trump Ice water, Mr. Trump provided ample fodder for supporters and skeptics — waxing about foreign policy and his TV ratings, displaying a detailed understanding of the political landscape and a curious insensitivity toward potential voters.

At one point, he compared his opposition to the legalization of same-sex marriage to his reluctance to use a new kind of putter.

“It’s like in golf,” he said. “A lot of people — I don’t want this to sound trivial — but a lot of people are switching to these really long putters, very unattractive,” said Mr. Trump, a Republican. “It’s weird. You see these great players with these really long putters, because they can’t sink three-footers anymore. And, I hate it. I am a traditionalist. I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay, but I am a traditionalist.”

He said that, should he run, he would offer himself as a “conservative with a big heart.”

To that end, he said, he would do nothing to curtail benefits for senior citizens, whom he called the “lifeblood of this country.” But he suggested that his biggest objection to Representative Paul D. Ryan’s deficit reduction plan — which has alarmed seniors on Medicaid — was not its substance but what he saw as poor strategy by Mr. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, in rolling it out.

“As a poker player, he shouldn’t have put forth such an early plan,” Mr. Trump said. “Anybody who touches Medicare,” he added, “is in tremendous trouble politically. We, the Republicans, have an election to win.”

Mr. Trump, who faces scrutiny from Republicans over his conservative credentials, said he no longer supported two proposals he put forth in 1999, when he last considered running for president: a one-time tax of 14.25 percent on the wealthiest Americans and a single-payer health care program.

“We had a much different country when I proposed those two things,” he said.

Mr. Trump spoke knowledgably — and harshly — about Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul and America’s trade policies with China. But at times he betrayed a lack of engagement closer to home, incorrectly stating that only one member of the New York City Council was a Republican. (There are five.)

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Mr. Trump, 64, repeatedly found ways to weave the topic of his wealth, and its reach, into the conversation. “Look at that,” he interrupted, pointing to a giant white plane hovering outside the room’s windows. “That’s my plane. How beautiful is that?”

He also announced that he had just bought a Boeing 757 from Paul G. Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft, and was having it refitted to his specifications. “I was going to buy a 737,” he explained, “then I heard about this one.”

Yet Mr. Trump emphasized that he was ready to walk away from much of his life to mount a bid for the presidency.

Should he run, he said, he would relinquish control of his company to three of his children, Donald, Eric and Ivanka, who have worked with him for years. He said that his wife, Melania, 41 — who appeared briefly, bathrobe-clad, to say hello during the interview — had not only encouraged him to run but vowed to campaign with him. “She would be great,” he said.

Still, there are adjustments to be made. The obscenities in his Vegas speech drew criticism: Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, for example, said on Sunday that such language was not presidential. Mr. Trump said he had catered the speech to the largely working- and middle-class audience.

“It was a great crowd and great people,” he said. “But it was also a crowd that loves that kind of emphasis.

“Would I do it in a different location, would I do it in front of a different crowd, even a different crowd in Las Vegas? Uh, no.”

He said he “rarely” curses. But minutes later, he used a profanity to describe a political consultant who had offended him.

Mr. Trump, an admitted germophobe, conceded he did not relish the idea of shaking thousands of hands on the campaign trail, but said he had become more at ease with the practice.

“I still have a thing” about it, he acknowledged. “Shaking hands is proven to be a bad thing to do for our health.”

He recalled a fan walking out of a restroom at the “21” Club in Manhattan recently, approaching him with an outstretched hand. “Now, I have two choices,” Mr. Trump explained. “Don’t shake it, and here’s a man that for the rest of his life will hate Donald Trump. But I don’t want that. I have a heart. Or shake it. And you don’t know what you are shaking. And you know what I did?” he asked. I shook his hand. And then, I didn’t eat as well, because I didn’t know where his hand was. But I can tell you it wasn’t in a very good place.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 2, 2011, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: After Roasting, Trump Reacts In Character. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe